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The Godfather of Rock Criticism
Paul Williams

By Pat Thomas, with Christoph Gurk

Growing up in the late 1970s, there was very little available to read by legendary rock scribe Paul Williams. His books were out of print, old issues of Crawdaddy! were long gone, and Paul himself was M.I.A. for the most part. It wasn't until Paul published his first major tome on Bob Dylan [Bob Dylan: Performing Artist] that I was able to get into the meat of what made Paul great. Here was a book about Dylan that didn't worry about what color shirt he was wearing the day he recorded this song or that one. The book went past that bullshit and got into the essence of the music. How does it sound and more importantly how does it feel? Paul was able to explain feelings about Bob's music that I didn't know I had. And most importantly, although Paul's writing was very personal, he left his ego at the door. Later when I met Paul, there was no ego, no "I am a rock legend" or "I know everything" attitude, that I have experienced time and time again from music journalists with far less to brag about than Paul Williams.

Paul, for many reasons, is not gonna be on MTV interviewing Pearl Jam, he's not gonna blow hot wind in front of a video camera doing a documentary on the history of rock n roll--he's just not that kind of guy. I strongly suggest you check out his revamped and reborn Crawdaddy!. No ads, no corporate sponsorship, just solid heartfelt writing. Paul's writing has moved me to check out bands I never would have dreamed of checking out, because he brings the human element into it, gets inside of himself, seemingly getting inside of me. Now, I know this sounds all flowery and new agey, but Paul came out of the 1960s and he never lost his naiveté about listening to music; it still sounds fresh to his ears. He's not some jaded hack on the staff of (fill-in-the-blank magazine) being forced to listen to crap he doesn't wanna listen to, he only reviews what he really likes and what truly moves him. I think that's rare these days.

One of Paul's faves is Neil Young, who I personally have given up on (though I applaud his commitment to keep waving the flag). Nevertheless, it's a Neil Young song title that sums up Paul Williams for me, and that's "Mr. Soul." What follows is a previously unpublished interview I did with Paul in a café in Germany a couple of years back. (Also joining us was Christoph Gurk, who at that time was editor of Germany's most respected, if overly scholastic, music magazine, SPEX).

So what does Paul have to brag about, but doesn't? The man started the first real rock music magazine, Crawdaddy!, while still a teenager--a year-and-a-half before Jann Wenner started Rolling Stone. Via Crawdaddy!, he gave a lot of other "legends" their first writing outlet: Sandy Pearlman, Peter Guralnick, Jon Landau, and Richard Meltzer, to name just a few. He also hung with Tim Leary and sang with him on John and Yoko's "Give Peace A Chance" single, recorded in a Montreal hotel room in 1969. If you ever get a chance to see the video from that day, Paul's clearly in it...I could go on all day. He's the man. Long may he run.

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Something New: The Birth of Crawdaddy!

Paul Williams at Swarthmore, April 1966

Pat Thomas:   Why don't we just start at the beginning: How you first got into writing. Were you doing any fiction or non-fiction writing before you actually started writing about rock 'n' roll?

Paul Williams:   Well, not really, I was writing high school term papers or something like that, but I usually say that I got started as a professional writer by publishing myself, because when I started Crawdaddy! I didn't have anyone else writing for me so I had to write all this stuff to fill up the pages. And it took a while, but after all I got a sense of what I wanted to do, you know? And I started sounding more like something that was really me. My first publications outside of Crawdaddy! were either, like, Hit Parader reprinting something from Crawdaddy!, and then other magazines calling me up because Crawdaddy! was starting to get attention.

Christopher Gurk:   That was '66, right?

Paul Williams:   Yeah, the first issue came out at the end of January in 1966.

Pat Thomas:   And how old were you then, Paul?

Paul Williams:   17.

Pat Thomas:   How did you get the idea? This was really the first rock magazine or fanzine...

Paul Williams:   In the States, yeah.

Pat Thomas:   So how did you dream this up?

Paul Williams:   Well, there were two big influences on me. One was that I'd been a science fiction fan and was used to putting out magazines. When I was 14, I put out my first science fiction fanzine, and there was a whole community of people doing that, and I put that out for a couple years. You know, mimeograph stencils and writing your own magazine seemed normal to me coming out of that world. The other influence was, when I started Crawdaddy! I was at Swathmore College near Philadelphia, I'd grown up in Cambridge and the Boston suburbs, and there was a very active folk scene, and of course there were folk music magazines...

Pat Thomas:   Like Sing Out and Broadside...

Paul Williams:   In Boston there was one called Boston Broadside, which was really great and it came out every week, and that was really a model for me, too. When I turned from being a folk music fan, 'cause I'd been a real Club 47, you know, blues/folk fan, and the Rolling Stones converted me to rock 'n' roll--'cause it was kind of like a passageway from blues to rock. It's interesting, because after resisting the Beatles and kind of liking some of their songs, or even a couple Beach Boys songs, I was still not taking any of it seriously because I was a folk snob. Then I got really excited about Rolling Stones Now! and the single "The Last Time," and the Kinks's "You Really Got Me" and the Beatles's "Ticket to Ride."

Christoph Gurk:   All in '64, '65.

Paul Williams:   Yeah, basically for me it was February, March 1965. I guess it was just before Bringing It All Back Home came out. As I was becoming a rock 'n' roll fan, "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds came on the radio, and that was really what gave Dylan--I mean, even though he'd already recorded "Subterranean Homesick Blues"--it gave him permission to go in the direction he wanted to go.

Christoph Gurk:   You didn't see that festival where Dylan...

Paul Williams:   Newport? No, I didn't, no. I was at Newport in '66, but Dylan wasn't there. I got turned on to Dylan in 1963 because a friend of mine went to Newport and came back and was telling me all about Bob Dylan and I had to listen to his record, which was Freewheelin'. And I saw him for the first time in '63, but that was still an acoustic show, a solo show.

Pat Thomas:   It seems like it was easy for you to--you mentioned once in one of your books I think about hanging out with the Beach Boys in their studio, another time you mentioned something to me about being involved with David Crosby writing some songs...it seems like it was easier for you to kind of "mingle with the stars" as it were than it would be if someone wanted to do that now. Do you think that was maybe because you were kind of the first guy trying to get their attention?

Paul Williams:   Um, yeah, sure, there weren't very many rock journalists, so it was easier to get access for the few people who were. It's kind of different in each case. I was a big fan of the Rolling Stones but I never met them; I don't remember trying to, but I would've loved to, you know what I mean. [As for] the American bands, I would get turned on to them early; I saw the Doors, the Buffalo Springfield, and Jefferson Airplane and so forth before they were nationally known. So, yeah, you always had access to bands at that level.

Christoph Gurk:   [The Doors] were fairly underground, they were the house band at the Whiskey or something.

Paul Williams:   Yeah, that's right. Really, anybody could meet them if they wanted to.

Pat Thomas:   So you actually flew out to California and said, "Here I am..."

Paul Williams:   Yeah, you know, I can't remember, for example, how I met the Springfield--it was the week they were recording "For What It's Worth," and I was already a fan because I'd heard "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing" on the radio, it was a single that came out before the album. So I wanted to meet them and I think there was a girl in the Youngbloods' office in New York who was already a Springfield fan, so she told me how to get in touch with them or something. But it was that kind of thing. In the case of the Beach Boys, I remember that Michael Vosse, who was working for them, drove me up to Brian's house, but exactly how it was all set up...you couldn't get help from record companies, some of them were organized to do that and some of them weren't, but it was way before, you know, the whole publicist kind of world grew.

Christoph Gurk:   I guess the whole circuit of music writers, magazines, and publicists wasn't such a big mechanism as it is nowadays.

Paul Williams:   That's right, it was tiny compared to how it is now.

Christoph Gurk:   More or less people knew each other maybe better than they do today. I don't know any publicists in Germany, and I don't want to...

Paul Williams:   No, you don't want them calling you up, right. Same for me, I'd rather buy my records than have to get calls from publicists.

Christoph Gurk:   Would you say it was more casual than what it is today?

Paul Williams:   Yeah, unless you were dealing with--I mean, that's why I didn't meet the Rolling Stones, because then already there was a star thing going on where you had to fight your way in, and it just didn't appeal to me to do that. When I met the Beatles it wasn't because of Crawdaddy!--I mean, I didn't meet the Beatles, I met John Lennon--but that was because I was with Tim Leary and we went to the Bed-in for Peace, it didn't have to do with being a rock journalist as such.

Pat Thomas:   How was Crawdaddy! initially published and distributed?

Paul Williams:   Well, it started out completely as a fanzine, and the first issue I mailed out to record companies and radio stations, and waited for something to happen. Same thing with the second issue. And I began selling it in newsstands in Boston and around Philadelphia and New York, and each issue kind of grew a little. We really didn't know anything was happening, it might've died between the third issue--there was a big gap, I think the third issue came out in March, I was still at Swarthmore. And then I had that problem which caused me to drop out of college, that you know about, Richard Farina's death. I went back to Boston, didn't know what I was going to do, and finally put together another issue of Crawdaddy! that was mimeographed and sold it at the Newport Folk Festival in July. And that, actually, was kind of a breakthrough. We put Bob Dylan on the cover, which was a good idea [laughs]; we sold a lot of copies at Newport. Simon & Garfunkel's office actually gave me $100 to write a little bio or something, but it was a way of giving me some money so I could print the next issue. But the response to that issue was very encouraging. And the other thing was I met Jac Holzman of Elektra at Newport, and he bought the first national ad for the next issue of the magazine, so it's like, all right, now we can do the next issue!

Pat Thomas:   Do you remember what record it was for?

Paul Williams:   I think it was probably What's Shakin', a compilation--the famous compilation because it had the Butterfield Blues Band's "Born In Chicago" on it--it was a hit single. [Paul later amended this to state that it was actually Butterfield's East-West, which came out in '66.--ed.]

Christoph Gurk:   That was a hit single?

Paul Williams:   Well, it was LIKE a hit single. It wasn't a hit single in the normal sense because it wasn't a 45, but Jac had the idea of putting out this sampler of things from Elektra and the first song on it was "Born in Chicago." Records in those days cost about $3.50, but this album only cost $1, and people were buying it like crazy because of this one song, "Born In Chicago."

Christoph Gurk:   And Rolling Stone magazine started when?

Paul Williams:   The fall of '67, about a year-and-a-half after Crawdaddy!

Christoph Gurk:   Was there any communication between the people from Crawdaddy! and Rolling Stone? Did you feel competitive--or did they feel competitive toward what you were doing?

Paul Williams:   They probably felt more competitive than what we did, just because Jann has got more of a business sense--that's just more of his direction. I knew Jann a little bit before he started Rolling Stone; he was writing a music column for a paper called the Sunday Ramparts that Ramparts magazine was putting out for a little while on the west coast. And we talked, and he was interested in Crawdaddy!, and Ralph Gleason, who helped Jann start Rolling Stone, was an early supporter and fan of Crawdaddy!. And one of the first sort of 'star' writers that Jann got was Jon Landau, who'd been writing in every issue of Crawdaddy! Because Jann liked what he'd been writing in Crawdaddy!, he got him to write for Rolling Stone, which wasn't too hard since we weren't paying him.

Christoph Gurk:   So Landau was writing for Crawdaddy!?

Paul Williams:   Yeah, the first place he was published was in Crawdaddy!. He was working in a record store in Harvard Square, and I would come in, and we would talk about music, and he would say, "You know, you should let me write this stuff," and I said, "Sure!" And he started writing reviews for Crawdaddy! in the summer of '66.

Pat Thomas:   Who else was writing for Crawdaddy! that people would know now?

Paul Williams:   Well, the mainstay writers, the ones that would write every issue, were Jon Landau, Richard Meltzer...

Christoph Gurk:   Richard Meltzer...

Paul Williams:   Very controversial right from the beginning. People hated him--you loved him or hated him. He was writing brilliant stuff at the time. Sandy Pearlman, he went on to become known for his work [as a producer] with Blue Oyster Cult, formerly the Soft White Underbelly. And he did a Clash album, I guess [Give 'Em Enough Rope], so he was also a regular. Those three guys and myself. And then there were interesting people who contributed now and then: the science fiction writer, Samuel R. Delaney, did some pieces for us; David Henderson, who wrote that first book about Jimi Hendrix ['Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky], a black poet, he wrote for us occasionally; Peter Guralnick, probably his first music writing that was published, some pieces on blues singers, were in Crawdaddy!; Tony Glover wrote for us a few times. He'd actually been writing for Little Sandy Review, Paul Nelson's 'zine. Paul Nelson wrote a little bit for Crawdaddy!, too. Little Sandy Review was a kind of forerunner of Crawdaddy! in a sense; it was strictly a folk magazine, but it had that fanzine kind of feeling to it.

Christoph Gurk:   So more or less the people who made it later in Rolling Stone and who achieved some fame, most of them you still remember as Rolling Stone writers...

Paul Williams:   Yeah, some of them. I don't know if Meltzer was ever a Rolling Stone writer, I don't think so. He'd wrote a lot for all the New York press and so forth, but...yeah, Lester Bangs hadn't shown up on the scene yet, he was writing for Creem, that was really where he got his exposure. Creem came along after Crawdaddy! was already out. I did Crawdaddy! for about three years.

Crawdaddy! Lets It Bleed

Pat Thomas:   That was gonna be my next question: how or why you dropped out after this initial push?

Paul Williams:   Well, there's a couple of reasons. I left at the end of '68. Basically, I couldn't stand being in New York anymore, I couldn't stand running a business anymore. I mean, I started it myself and I always felt like I had to be in control of it--it wasn't gonna come out right, I couldn't let somebody else own it, or blah blah blah, and as a result, as it got bigger I just had all this responsibility and dealing with all these people and with what they expected, and that was how I grew from 17 years old to 20 years old, and, you know, it was exciting, but the stress of running a "business"--we never made any money, but each issue we'd be doing better, so we'd just be able to grow. Whatever money you theoretically made went into the next issue being bigger. And so it grew from 500 copies to 25,000 copies.

Christoph Gurk:   25,000?

Paul Williams:   Around the time I left I think we were up to something like that, yeah. So it really grew--it was a great success story in a way. There was no money in it, but because it was the first thing on the scene, and because the rock 'n' roll scene was getting so much attention then, Crawdaddy! got a lot of attention. But, when I left, I just didn't want to do it anymore. I didn't want to stay in New York. And, it had been a kind of crusade. I always identified with the underground press papers that were coming out around the same time, and I was a hippy, I was taking LSD and marching in peace demonstrations and everything that went along with that, and for me, I started the magazine because I thought that since people were so intense about this music that they were listening to, it was a great common denominator, where we can talk about everything we're interested in, using the fact that we're listening to the same records. So, if I talk about what I'm hearing in this new Stones record, it may not be the same as what you're hearing, but we have something in common that we'll make a connection. But I was always publishing basically a personal essay. Landau focused more tightly on the music than the other writers, but everybody was writing these long personal essays based around this new record that they were excited about. Certainly in not as commercial a form as what Rolling Stone did, and Rolling Stone was what people wanted. So I was feeling that pressure already--I knew what the readers of the magazine wanted, but it wasn't necessarily what I was interested in, you know, more news, more personality features, more photographs, whatever.

But the other thing was that Crawdaddy! was a crusade. When I started it people said, how could you possibly write about rock 'n' roll? You know, there's nothing to write about--ridiculous! And so we were into having people take the music seriously. Not that we were just serious--that was kind of an image we had--there was a tremendous amount of humor, for example in Meltzer and Pearlman, that some people couldn't see. But the whole idea was that, yeah, this is our music and it's just as good as any other art form from any other era. We'll just talk about it like we think the stuff is great, and it was thrilling to see the Doors album and the second Jefferson Airplane album going up the charts because suddenly our music was getting popular. And it was an exciting time. By the time I left Crawdaddy! in late '68, that battle had been won. Now the New York Times was reviewing rock music, you know? Plenty of people were writing about it and taking it seriously, and it was growing into a big business, and there wasn't any sense anymore of trying to prove something or rallying a community or something like that. And that was what had been fun for me. It was like, all right, we did that, it's over.

Christoph Gurk:   As soon as rock 'n' roll became recognized as an art form, with records being reviewed in the New York Times, this was the same time when the commercial breakthrough happened. You could promote and turn this into a bigger market by declaring this as an art form...

Paul Williams:   Well, the same thing is going on right now with the independent world and the success of indie rock following Nirvana and so forth, and Matador, which is really a great company, but [which] in fact, I think we can say now, has been swallowed by Atlantic. There's been a lot of arguing about what's true, and they'll argue...but it's a real issue for a lot of people. There was this independent scene that was really strong in a certain way, and you can't blame a band for wanting to have a larger audience to make a living, but at the same time there's a tremendous sense of something being lost. And there really is no answer to it. I mean, the Maximum Rock 'n' Roll attitude is just as ridiculous as the major label attitude, really, so as an individual musician, or as an individual music fan, or whatever, you have to find your way through it.

I mean, one more footnote on the subject is that Kurt Cobain was somebody you could sympathize with, but he took it all much too seriously. Again, this religion of the indie scene. I like Nirvana's music better than Pearl Jam's, but I like Pearl Jam's values a lot better, in terms of they're standing up to Ticketron and refusing to do videos; Nirvana gave off much more confused messages [laughs] as far as their actual business decisions and that kind of thing. But it was the self-consciousness of, you know, "we are the indie movement." That doesn't work.

But anyway, going back to what happened to Crawdaddy!, the best that I can say is that, you get a little period of freedom before the rest of the world discovers what's happening, and you just have fun during that time and run with it. The same thing happened to the San Francisco ballroom scene, the Fillmore and the Avalon. It's forgotten at this point, but a lot of people were tremendously disappointed when the Fillmore started getting a lot of publicity and all these people were coming in from the suburbs and the sense of community fell apart. And it just seems like it's a natural sort of process that something really exciting starts happening, and, at least in this business, when it gets to a certain point then it attracts the attention of the world, and that doesn't mean that it's spoiled. It's a ridiculous attitude to think that, say, R.E.M. only matters during their indie period. Obviously, a great band can just go on and continue to make great music, and it would've been ridiculous for R.E.M. to stay at an indie level. But, in a lot of cases, you just have to let it go when the world discovers you.

Pat Thomas:   I guess you effectively "sold" Crawdaddy! to someone else?

Paul Williams:   Well, in theory. I knew that if I didn't stay in New York that I wouldn't get paid. If I wanted to get paid I'd have to stay in New York another year, and money wasn't even an issue to me. I needed to go on with my life. I was very young and it was time to go. So, I sold it, but I never got paid. And I brought in my friend Chester Anderson to take over as editor, and he did another four or five issues after I left, and then the people who were bank-rolling it gave up or ran out of money. What was strange was that it didn't die; it died and came back. I wasn't around so I don't know exactly how it happened. But Peter Stafford then became the editor and it came back as a newspaper format like Rolling Stone, and it was that way through 1970, I think, and it kept going. After Stafford it was edited by Raenne Rubenstein and then Peter Knobler. And Peter Knobler's father actually bought it--again, not from me, nobody owned it. At some point they paid me a little money for the trademark, which I still theoretically owned. This is 1973 by this point.

The magazine kept going, it kept coming out every month, until 1979. They wanted to broaden the base or something. They changed the name to Feature, and they expanded and it didn't work, and it went out of business a couple issues later. So I always figured that the name was magic, somehow [laughs]--it kept it afloat, and once they lost the name, that was it.


Onward to Part 2 of Paul Williams